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Thursday, 6 December 2012

Bluegrass explosion in Belgium

Do you know lots of movies in which people like Bill Monroe, J.D. Crowe, and Tony Rice are mentioned ?

Well, there is one now. The Broken Circle Breakdown was launched in the Belgian movie theatres and had 270,000 visitors so far. It’s probably going to be this year's best-selling movie (Belgium counts only 11 million people).

The word 'bluegrass', only known by a happy few over here, is suddenly mentioned in all national media (news, radio, TV, newspapers…). The movie is a dramatic love story in which the main character is a banjo player in a bluegrass band. He meets a woman and she joins the band as a singer. Their young daughter becomes a victim of cancer…

The music featured in the movie is a mix of bluegrass and acoustic country. [On the right: the cover of the 15-track soundtrack CD]

So far the movie has not been translated to other languages than Flemish, but here’s one of the trailers.

The two main actors, along with along with some other musicians (including Bert from Rawhide), are touring the cultural centres right now. The tour is completely sold out. The soundtrack went immediately to number 1 on the pop charts!

Of course the two main actors are the most important part for the hype, but also the established bluegrass bands will benefit from this. It’s cool to play bluegrass these days. Yesterday Rawhide was interviewed by a youth press agency reporting on bluegrass bands in Belgium.